■ * M 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



mm 



----- GwW 1*- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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TX>afr§ttK*b0* 




Works by John Boyle O'Reilly. 

Life of John Boyle O'Reilly. By James 

Jeffrey Roche. With introduction by Cardinal Gib- 
bons. Poems and speeches edited by Mrs. John Boyle 
O'Reill,. (Cassell & Co., New York; T. Fisher 
Unwin, London.) i vol. 8vo. 



In second division of above volume are included 
the four Volumes of Poems: 

Songs of the Southern Seas ; 

Songs, Legends and Ballads ; 

Statues in the Block ; 

In Bohemia, 
and the poems uncollected at the time of his death. 



The Prose Volumes are : 

Moondyne, nmo, cloth. 

Athletics and Manly Sports, i2mo, cloth. 



WATCHWORDSv™ 

JOHN-BOYLE-OREILLY 

EDITED-BY-KATHERINE-E- 
CONWAY 




.*-*"** 



BOSTON: PRINTED-by-JOSEPH 
GEORGE- CUPPLES-and-PUB= 
LISHED-BY-HIM-at-THE-BACK 
BAY- BOOKSTORE - 250-BOYL? 
STON-STREET 

V 



1/ *a 



Copyright, 1891, 
By J. G. CUPPLES. 



A II rights reserved. 



©ebicafton. 
* 

Co all to tofjom tfje toorti£ anti 

fceefc£ of Stoim 25opIe €>'lfteiUp 

fjatae Seen J)elp anti ejtam^ 

pie anti inspiration, 

tfje me$$age 

of tljis 




Contents. 



Estimate 

The Immortal Poet 
The Burden of Manhood 
Nature and Christ 
Authority .... 
Man's Secret of Strength . 
The Unity of Man's Blood . 
The Catholic Church . 

Liberty 

The Duty of Martyrdom 

The Patriot . 

Winning Causes 

Change 



page 
xvii 

1 

2 

2 

2 

3 

3 

4 

4 

4 

5 

6 

6 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

The Pilgrim Fathers .... 7 
Americanism for Ireland ... 7 
Plymouth Rock . . . . .7 
The Groundwork of True Liberty . 8 
Man's Growth and Freedom's Growth 9 
The Boston Massacre .... 9 

Democracy 10 

The Town Meeting . . . .11 
Man's Right and States' Rights . .11 
God's Alchemy of Exile . . .11 
America's Standing Army . . .12 
The Christian Commonwealth . .12 

A Man's Word 13 

God's Test 13 

Falsehood's Punishment . . .13 

Life . .13 

Women and Men 13 

experlence 14 

Duty 14 

The Hidden Sin 14 

Women and First Love . . .15 

Love's Secret 15 

Distance . . . . . . .16 

When Women Make Good Men . . 16 

To-day 16 

Oliver Wendell Holmes . . .16 
The Sorrow of Having . . .17 

The Lure 17 

Disraeli 17 



Contents 



IX 





page 


The Culture Worth Getting 


. 18 


Bohemia and Society 


. 18 


The Worst Defeat 


. 19 


Ireland's Motherhood . 


. 19 


A Man of the World 


. 20 




. 20 




. 20 


The Daily Newspaper . 


. 2] 




. 21 


A Journalist's Code of Honor 


. 22 


Men's Friendship-Breakers . 


. 22 


The Poet's Success 


. 22 




, 22 




. 23 




. 24 


Work and Trust 


. 25 


Character in Muscle 


. 26 


Bone and Sinew and Brain . 


. 26 


Inheritance .... 


. 27 


The Loving Cup of the Papyrus . 


. 27 


The Test of Time . 


. 28 


Our Duty to the Future America 


.N .. 28 


Facts and Truths . 


. 29 


A Man and His Frlend . 


. 29 


Peace in Power . 


. 29 


The Kind Word Unspoken . 


. 29 




. 30 


A Builder's Lesson 


. 30 




. 31 



X 



€ont0nt$u 





page 


Work-Test and Love-Test . 


31 


The Love that Lives 


81 


When God Speaks .... 


32 


Poets and Prophets 


32 


Doubt ...... 


32 


Loss and Defeat .... 


32 


The Mean Soul's Gain . 


33 




33 


The Indestructible Eight . 


33 


A Keason for Mercy . 


34 


Realism 


34 


The Measure of Vitality 


34 




35 


A Nation's Test . 


35 


Freedom's Martyr . . • . 


35 


The Seed of Sacrifice . 


36 


Robert Emmet 


36 


Time and Great Men . . . . 


36 


The Higher Being . 


37 


England and Ireland . 


37 


Edmund Burke 


38 




38 


Thomas Moore . . . . 


39 


Word and Deed 


39 


Social Ostracism and Slavery 


39 


The Irish- Americans . 


40 


Make Peace at the Source of Enmity 


40 




41 




41 



Contents xi 

PAGE 

Boston and Eevolutions . . .41 
The Lesson of Crispus Attucks . . 42 

Legal Sins 42 

Politics 43 

Wendell Phillips 43 

A Living Flag 43 

The Land Accursed . . . .43 
Soldier and Citizen . . . .44 

God's Building 44 

The Negro American . . . .45 

The Tory 45 

Social Dangers and the Higher Law . 46 
Beware of the Wronged . . .46 
The Flower of the Tree of Force . 47 
Reaping the Whirlwind . . .48 

The Hebrew Race 48 

The Aristocrat 49 

Blue Blood in America . . . .49 

A Seed 49 

The Soldiers' Song . . . .50 
The Life of the Tree of Liberty . 51 

The Union of Freemen . . . .51 
The Demon of Modern Progress . 52 

Harvard's First Colored Class Orator 53 

A White Rose 53 

The Banyan Tree of Evil . . .54 
Live in To-day ..... 54 
The Scar that is a Star . . .54 
Ireland for All Men's Freedom . . 55 



Xll 



Cont<nt& 



Life and Love . ' . 

Sham Bravery . 

The Negro and Political Parties 

Australia .... 

Boston 

Love Anchored 

Beyond the Grasp of Death 

An Autobiography 



page 
. 55 

. 55 

. 56 

. 56 

. 57 

. 58 

. 58 

. 59 



ajfifi 

Plferti. 





yUuBtxationB 



PAGE 

■i Portrait of John Boyle O'Reilly, 

in color Frontispiece 

The Light Set on a Hill . . Title page 
West Australian Scene 
The Athlete's Credentials 

Canoe of the Poet 

President's End of the Papyrus 
Club Table, Boston . ■. • 



VI 

vii 
xii 

xiii 



XIV 



^Pilu^tiratiottg* 



PAGE 

Dartmoor Prison, England . . xiv 
Palms of the Southern Seas . . xvi 
The Unfinished Tower . . . xvii 
^The Poet's Summer Home, Hull, 

Massachusetts . . . Facing xxiv 
\Pac-simile of Manuscript of Poem 

" What is Good?" . . Facing xxxii 
The O'Reilly Crest ... xli 

Shamrock xliii, 60 

Ship " Gazelle," in which O'Reilly 

Escaped from Australia . . xliv 
The Poet's Manuscript ... 1 



*<%.!$.■*■•>■"->..— 







JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY, 

Poet and Literary Worker. 



BY 

KATHERINE E. CONWAY. 




JOHN BOYLE 0REILLY 

Poet and Literary Worker 



Truer in their application to himself 

even than to the poet for whom they 

were written, the words of John Boyle 

O'Reilly : 

The singer who lived is always alive, we 
hearken and always hear. 






x^iii estimate. 

But in his case, the memory of the 

man who is gone is still so 

vital and energizing as greatly 

to divert the thought from the 

poet who remains. 

It was not an Irishman, but 

a son of the Puritans, who 

wrote of John Boyle O'Reilly : 

I wish we could make all the 
people in the world stand still and 
think and feel about this rare, 
great, exquisite-souled man until 
they should fully comprehend him. 
Boyle was the greatest man, the 
finest heart and soul I knew in 
Bostoc. and my most dear friend. 

There are a favored few to 
whom this tremendous praise 
is but the plain arithmetic and 
proKe of John Boyle O'Reilly. 
Thfy are the sharers of his 
daily labors ; to whom, after 
Jre^rs of the crucial work-day 
test, he still remained 

The selfless man and stainless gen- 
tleman, 

their hero. 

One of these, set to estimating the 










<££timate* xix 

poet and literary worker, finds it hard 
to move against the current 
that makes for retrospect of 
the noble character and extra- 
ordinary personal charm of the 
man. Yet his work reflects 
himself so faithfully that in 
the "Watchwords/' culled 
from his poetry and prose, 
which follow, we have at once 
the man and the artisan. 

"His poems," wrote Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, " show what 
he might have been had he 
devoted himself to letters." 
Rather do they show what he 
might have been had he lived 
out all his days, maintaining 
what the same appreciative 
critic recognizes as his higher 
claim, " a true and courageous 
lover of his country and his 
fellow-men," and letting that 
love have voice as it would. 

It is interesting to note how 
a poet defines a poet. John Boyle 








XX 



€gtimate* 



O'Reilly wrote thus in the last year of 
his life, of poets, whom he 
called "The Useless Ones" : 



sr— K <M N 



Poets should not reason 

Let them sing ! 
Argument is treason — 

Bells should ring. 






xzyv 



"&- 



P> 



_ tl^ Statements none 



:$? 



nor ques- 
tions — 
Gnomic words, 
Spirit-cries, suggestions, 
Like the birds. 



^sj-*^ He may use deduction 
bjfe# Who must preach ; 



/& 



h#> 



'"& 



r, 



He may praise instruction 
Who must teach. 

But the poet duly 

Fills his part 
When the song bursts truly 

From his heart. 

^ -J^ "7V "7v ^c 

As the leaf grows sunward 
Song must grow; 

As the stream flows onward 
Song must flow. 

Useless? Ay, — for measure ; 

Roses die, 
But their breath gives pleas- 
ure — 

God knows why ! 

Except in his sincerity and spon- 



estimate* 



XXI 




taneity, Boyle O'Reilly did not fulfil 
his own definition. No 
singer lie of songs to be 
matched with bells and%?T^£§ 
roses ; but a poet such as §£^ 
he describes otherwhere, of 

— God's right and the human 

wrong, < 

The heroes who die unknown, 
and the weak who are 
chained and scourged by 
the strong. 

In no other guise could 
the poet's vocation have 
had much charm for one 
who seeing terrible human 
needs and immutable truths 
clearly, felt upon his soul 
"the great but acceptable 
burden of manhood — the 
allegiance which a true 
man owes to the truth." 

Yet a few of his lyrics 

— flawless gems of poetry 

— prove that if he had not 3! 
seen a higher thing to do &^ 
it for, he, like anv of "The Useless 






xxii ggftimate* 

Ones," could have done "the singing 
for itself." 

We need but name " Her 
Refrain," "Jacqueminots," and 
"Love's Secret." This last 
named, a little poem of five 
stanzas, given first before his 
beloved Papyrus Club, is thus 
commended by Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson : 

Verses so exquisite in tone, 
touching with such pathetic poetry 
the very heart and core of the 
deepest tie that binds man to 
woman, that there is many a poet 
of America and England, whose 
verses fill the newspapers and 
magazines, who might well give ail 
his fame if the authorship of 
these five verses could be trans- 
ferred to him. 

Yet, even here is the " de- 
duction " against which he lifts 
a warning finger : 

Love lies within the brimming 

bowl of sense : 
Who keeps this full hath joy — 

who drains, affliction. 

Beginning one of his best narrative 







<££timate* 



XXUl 






poems, " The Statues in the Block," 
he strikes this major chord : 

"Love is the secret of the world," 
he said ; 

The cup we drain and still desire to 
drink. 

The loadstone hungers for the 
steel ; the steel, 

Inert amid a million stones, re- 
sponds to this. 

So yearn and answer hearts that 
truly love : 

Once touch their life-spring, it 
vibrates to death ; 

And twain athrill as one are nature- 
wed. 

But he makes the joy of tri- 
umphant love, and the hot 
wrath of love deceived and dis- 
honored, and even the pure 
passion of the patriot for his 
suffering motherland, pale be- 
fore the glory of the love pu- 
rified of self by suffering and 
loss, and thus fitted to tri- 
umph over death — 

— the love beyond 
The biding light that moves not, 

and whose symbol in the marble is " a 







XXIV 



<££timate* 



beginning, not an end." From the 



$ 



^4 



closing lines, 



When God gives to us the 

clearest sight, 
He does not touch our eyes 

with Love, but Sorrow ; 

stretches over a decade 
of years a strong but in- 
visible thread which joins 
them to what are almost 

his latest written words : 
'\ 

The sweetest happiness we 
*, ever know, the very wine of 
[ human life, comes not from 

love, but from sacrifice. 

He published compara- 
tively little subjective poet- 



ry 



but in his narrative 



poems and poems of great 
causes, the sincerity of the 
man could allow of no illus- 
trations save those which 
were the outcome of per- 
rj % sonal experience ; so that 
there are many pathetic 
subjective touches in his 
poems the most distinctly objective. 



€£timate* 



JvV 



In the little poem appended, we 
think Boyle O'Reilly has 
touched the high - water 
mark of his lyrical poetry. 
He calls it 



A TRAGEDY. 

A soft-breasted bird from 

the sea 
Fell in love with the light- 
house flame ; 

And it wheeled round the tower 
with the airiest wing, 

And floated and cried like a 
love-lorn thing; 

It brooded all clay and it flut- 
tered all night, 

But could win no look from 
the steadfast light. 



&'» 



K» ~ 



-3*4 



3-jAl 



i <jj 



~M 



For the flame had its heart 

afar, — 
Afar with the ships at sea; 
It was thinking of children 

and waiting wives, 
And darkness and danger to 

sailors' lives ; 
But the bird had its tender 

bosom pressed 
On the glass where at last it 

dashed its breast. 
The light only flickered, the 

brighter to glow ; 
But the bird lay dead on the rocks below. 



L^a 



"J 






xxvi animate. 

The poem has a value apart from 
its pathos and its beauty; for 
the "light-house flame " is very 
like the heart of the poet, 
which could not rest long in 
the pleasant things of life near 
at hand, but went afar with 
the ships at sea, to his brother- 
man on the remotest shore, 
wherever there was agony un- 
der oppression, or struggle for 
freedom. 

John Boyle O'Reilly has been 
called the Poet of Liberty. 
But his Liberty is "God's 
Daughter," the sister of Duty 
and the sister of Faith, and 
her realm is the whole earth, 
for all men are brothers. 



I am Liberty ! Fame of nation or 
praise of statute is naught to 
me ; 

Freedom is growth and not crea- 
tion : one man suffers, one man 
is free. 

One brain forges a constitution ; 
but how shall the million souls 
be won? 









<££timate* xxvii 

Freedom is more than a resolution — he is not 
free who is free alone. 

But in prose and poetry his 
insistence is less on Liberty 
than on the Human Brother- 
hood. Intelligent men need no 
demonstration of the beauty 
and rectitude of liberty for 
themselves. The point of dif- 
ficulty is to convince them of 
other men's right to equal 
blessing. The unity of the 
human blood is the warrant 
for the equality of the human 
right; and this conviction gives 
its color to all Boyle O'Reilly's 
literary expression. 

Cut into his poems where you 
will, you always find 

The heart within bloocl-tinctured 
of a veined humanity. 

The Irish blood is the gulf- 
stream of humanity. In no 
other current of the great rest- 
less ocean does the passion for 
the ideal of freedom throb so fiercely ; 








XXVI 11 



<t£$ttmatt. 




in no other current is it so easy to take 
the sounding which "uni- 
fies all," and proves our 
racial divisions to be 
"mere surface shine and 
i^ shadow." But this was 
* never realized in New 
England, until after the 
warming and softening cur- 
rent had floated John Boyle 
J&r OTveilly thither. 
p«$ He is greatest not in his 
jj* f poems for his native Ire- 
land, though his " Exile of 
the Gael" is the noblest 
tribute the English lan- 
guage has ever paid her ; 
not in his poems for Am- 
erica, in the best of which 
only Whittier and Lowell 
have surpassed him ; but in 
the poems which overleap 
nation and race barriers, 
like " Crispus Attucks," or 
commemorate a hero of hu- 
manity like "Wendell Phillips." 




estimate* 



XXIX 



Of the Wendell Phillips poem — " It is 
worthy of the great orator," 
wrote terse and scrupulous 
Whittier ; who both as poet 
and life-long admiring in- 
timate of the dead, would ■£ 
naturally be exacting. fc 

"I am proud to know *V 

K 

the man who wrote it: he' 






can quit now, his lasting 
fame is assured," said£- L 
George W. Cable of the -• * 
same poem, adding, "This 
poem will always shoot f£ 
above your usual work like 
the great spire in the Ca- 
thedral town." 

There was strong friend- ,\ 
ship and near spiritual kin- 
ship between Wendell Phil- W A 
lips and John Boyle O'Keil- 
ly ; and it was only poetic ^fe 
justice that the great Am- ^J 
erican orator who gave "the fa 
best he could do " to Daniel 
O'Connell, should have for his own 






xx* estimate, 

imperishable eulogy the best of the 
heart and brain of the greatest 
Irishman of his later clay. 

But whatever resemblances 
in the mind and soul of Phillips 
and O'Reilly, there was little 
in literary expression except 
the tendency to epigram. 

O'Reilly's prose style was 
terse, strong, and dramatic ; but 
it had not, either in the written 
or spoken word, and with his 
habit of mind, never would 
have had, those touches of 
homely drollery with which 
Wendell Phillips could ease the 
descent of hearer or reader 
from the heights whither his 
eloquence had carried them. 
We are not comparing oratory 
— that would be absurd — 
but simply prose expression. 
O'Reilly's "Common Citizen- 
Soldier" goes well with Wen- 
dell Phillips' "Abraham Lin- 
coln." They should stand to- 
gether in the literature of American pa- 










estimate* xxxi 

triotism. O'Reilly as a poet had little in 
common with two contemporary 
poets of Irish blood, esteemed 
in Boston's literary circles — 
Eobert Dwyer Joyce and 
Henry Bernard Carpenter. 
Both of these were literary men 
pure and simple ; instinctive 
artists and beauty worshippers, 
not sensitive to the poetic pos- 
sibilities of modern causes and 
li isms," but finding their most 
congenial themes in a time full 
of the enchantment of distance. 
The one was at his best in the 
old heroic age of Erin ; the 
other in mediaeval France or 
ancient Greece. But O'Reilly 
as man and poet was essentially 
of his own time. Here and 
Now absorbed his sympathy 
and endeavor ; and the city 
streets he daily trod were sug- 
gestive to his muse as the Ac- 
ropolis or even the hill of Tara 
would never have been. O'Reilly's 








XXX11 



<££timate* 



<&'} 



«£ 



^ 



poetry has many points of contact with 
both Whittier's and Low- 
ell's. His temperament gave 
it a quicker pulse and a 
V.) warmer color than theascet- 

1 ic Quaker poet's. Whittier, 
by poetic intuition, could 

^ sing of war and love, but 
O'Eeilly had been soldier 
and lover. But their blood 
rose with equal indignant 
bound at the word of in- 
justice or oppression, and 
the people knew it; for 
O'Eeilly was the chosen 
Laureate of the lowly ones 
where Whittier would have 
been in the day of his 
strength. No man's heart 
answered as did Whittier's 
to O'Beilly's " Crispus At- 
5> tucks." A glorious passage 
in this poem is the stanza, — 



blood of the people! Change- 
less tide — 



There are no parallels for it in American 



WW- C ^cmrS ] 



■o 










-/— y 









- IcrfLe^i. cn&:// 



lfzL-6^ 



animate* 



XXXlll 



patriotic poetry save that passage from 
Lowell's " Commemoration 
Ode," beginning 



That is best blood which has "3 

most iron in 't 
To edge resolve with, pouring 

without stint 
For what makes manhood 

dear ; 

and that stanza from his 
"Present Crisis "- 

Mankind are one in spirit. 



^4 X ^ 



« 



But Lowell's reaction 
from inherited Puritanism 
made him an analyzer and ffi?' 
a doubter. O'Reilly was 
held to the Catholic Church 
by an attraction as strong 
in the spiritual as the at- 
traction of gravitation is 
in the natural order. "I 
am a Catholic," he said, "as 
I am a dweller on the 
planet." lU 

Lowell doubted. O'Reilly ^^ 
affirmed. Lowell had a gentlemanly 






xxxiv 4E0ttmat& 

toleration for others' security of faith. 
O'Eeilly had a profound respect 
for sincerity of conviction and 
fidelity to light wherever he 
found them. And this without 
the least compromise of his 
own convictions. Out of no 
other temper could have come 
his poem for the "Pilgrim 
Fathers," whose power to stir 
his soul was not only in 

Their manly virtues, born of self- 
respect, 

but also in his grand conception 
of their God-given mission : 

They sowed the seeds of federated 
Man. 

When " the Irish singer's 
paean to their Fathers " reached 
"the undemonstrative Yankees' 
heart," they gave place to him 
as to the new poet laureate of 
New England. 

Except the stanzas written 
exclusively for the friendly eyes 
and jovial hearts of his club, O'Eeilly 










€gtxmate* xxxv 

never achieved a humorous poem. He 
was intensely earnest, and the 
merely droll or fantastic or in- 
genious never appealed to him. 
He detested such foreign arti- 
ficial importations into our 
poetry as the rondeau, the 
triolet, the palinode, etc., nor 
did he take kindly even to the 
sonnet. 

He held the exact expression 
of his thought in poetry far 
above mere beauty of phrase 
or mechanical accuracy of versi- 
fication. So we find him diversi- 
fying the couplets of the stately 
pentameter of his "Pilgrim 
Fathers" and "America," with 
an occasional triple rhyme ; or 
ringing a lawless syllable, now 
and then, into a line of blank 
verse. He worked hard on his 
poems till the thought stood out 
clear and strong Then he left 
them to their fate. Sometimes 
his technique was criticised. In his 








XXXVI 



€$timat& 



" Art-Master " lie gives us a life-sketch 
of the prevalent magazine 
poet whose verses are " all 
technique " : 



ISn^-4 



£,^ 



&'; 



c3>- 



8 



He gathered cherry-stones and 
carved them quaintly 
Into fine semblances of flies 
and flowers ; 
With subtle skill, he even im- 
aged faintly 
The forms of tiny maids and 
ivied towers. 

His little blocks he loved to 
file and polish, 
And ampler means he asked 
not, but despised. 
All art but cherry-stones he 
would abolish, 
For then his genius would be 
rightly prized. 

For such rude hands as dealt 
with wrongs and passions 
And throbbing hearts , he had 
a pitying smile. 
Serene his way through surg- 
ing years and fashions 
While Heaven gave him his 
cherry-stones and file ! 



In some of his poems, 
however, notably in "En- 
sign Epps," " The Songs That Are Not 



<S*£ttmate* 



XXXVll 



Sung," and "Wendell Phillips/ 
reaches a perfection of 
form that even his " Art 
Master " might envy. 

His poetry is strong, pure, 
tender, reverent, and hope- 
inspiring. He penned no 
morbid or pessimistic 
thought. He never had a. 
touch of the Swinburne- 
Rossetti scarlet fever in all 
his healthy poetic life. 

Writes his friend and 
biographer, James Jeffrey 
Roche : 



he 



or 







s% 



\s& 



The place in literature of 
John Boyle O'Reilly will be 
fixed by time. When we study 
his poems and speeches, and 
even his necessarily hasty edi- 
torial work, the one conspicu- 
ous quality evident in them is 
their author's growth — higher 
thought, finer workmanship, 
and, surest test of advance- 
ment, condensation in expres- "? 
sion. . . . Had he been 
granted twenty years more of 

life, with the leisure which he had well 



m 



5 






xxxviii <££ttmate* 

earned and hoped to enjoy, it is no partial 
praise to say that he might have at- 
tained the foremost place in the lit- 
erature of America. . . . He 
was hampered by the daily cares of 
his professional life. He had no 
leisure for calm thought or contin- 
uous work. That he should have 
achieved so much, under such con- 
ditions, is the highest proof of the 
great possibilities that lay behind, 
awaiting but time and opportunity 
for development. 

Some critics have already 

ranked him among our poets 

next to James Russell Lowell. 

Judge Mellen Chamberlain 
has given this verdict : 

I am inclined to rate John Boyle 
O'Reilly among the poets of his 
generation as the great ethical poet 
of America. 

E. H. Stoddard speaks of 
John Boyle O'Reilly's genius 
as shown even in his first book, 
"Songs of the Southern Seas," 
saying : 

I do not use the word genius in 
a conventional or careless sense, 
but intentionally and advisedly, with a full 









€£timate* xxxix 

understanding of what it means, or ought to 
mean, to critical readers. 

Eichard Watson Gilder also 
uses the great word " genius " 
for O'Reilly. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman 
thus estimates him : 

His poetry was in a marked 
degree the expression of the man 
himself — ardent, aspiring, tender 
and strong — in short, manly, with 
a fine scorn of petty niceties. In 
his youth it was charged with color, 
romance, picturesque effect ; in his 
middle-life with thought and con- 
viction ; and always with eloquent 
passion for human rights. 

Cardinal Gibbons says, in 
line with this : 

As strong as it was delicate and 
tender, as sympathetic and tearful 
as it was bold, his soul was a harp 
of truest tone, which felt the touch 
of the ideal everywhere, and spon- 
taneously breathed responsive 
music. 

James Whitcomb Riley wrote of the 








X 



1 



estimate* 



poems collected under the title 
Bohemia": 



In 



^M 



>„u 



or 



tt 



8% 



I like the thrill of such poems 
as these — 
All spirit and fervor of 
splendid fact — 
Pulse and muscle and arteries 
Of living, heroic thought 
and act. 
Where every line is a vein of 
red 
And rapturous blood, all un- 
conflned, 
As it leaps from a heart that 
has joyed and bled, 
With the rights and wrongs 
of all mankind. 



"A true poet . ' . . a 
loss to the world of let- 
ters," wrote Julia Ward 
Howe. 

"A beautiful light too 
early quenched," said Whit- 
tier to the writer of this 
brief estimate, after appre- 
ciative words of O'Keilly's 
poetry. 

We have embodied in 
these pages the verdict on 
the poet of a jury of his peers. Does 



¥ i 



oBjStimatc. 



xli 



it anticipate the verdict of posterity ? 

We know not ; but to us 
the highest praise of the 
poetry John Boyle O'Reilly 
has left us is that by the 
light of it we can see the 
plan of the temple which 
he raised to hardly half its 
predetermined height, and 
which stands noble and 
beautiful even in its pite- 
ous incompletion. 



: ^ 



^M 



& 



•js 



3* 



{Catherine E. Conway. 



VI 



YQRTITUp 




pRmmv^ 



§tom 





Tfta^uooirts 



THE IMMORTAL POET. 

True singers can never die , 

Their life is a voice of higher things un- 
seen to the common eye ; 

The truths and the beauties are clear to 
them, God's right and the human 
wrong, 

The heroes who die unknown, and the 
weak who are chained and scourged 
by the strong. 

And the people smile at the death-word, 
for the mystic voice is clear ; 

The singer who lived is always 

ALIVE : WE HEARKEN AND ALWAYS 
HEAR ! 



I©atd)to0t&& 



THE BURDEN OF MANHOOD. 

The great but acceptable burden of 
manhood — the overmastering but sweet 
allegiance that a true man owes to the 
truth. 



NATURE AND CHRIST. 

world around us, glory of the spheres ! 
God speaks in ordered harmony — be- 
hold ! 
Between us and the Darkness, clad in 

light, - 
Between us and the curtain of the Vast 

— two Forms, 
And each is crowned eternally — and 

One 
Is crowned with flowers and tender 

leaves and grass, 
And smiles benignly ; and the other One, 
With sadly pitying eyes, is crowned 

with thorns : 
Nature, and Christ, for men to love 
And seek and live by — Thine the dual 

reign — 
The health and hope and happiness of 

men! 



AUTHORITY. 

Authority must not forget humanity 



3©atcf)toor&g* 3 

man's secret of strength. 

The strength, of a man is in his sym- 
pathies : it is outside himself, as heat is 
outside fire, the aroma outside the flower. 
A man without sympathies for all that 
is rude, undeveloped, upheaving, strug- 
gling, suffering, man-making, as well as 
for what has been shaken to the top and 
is out of the pressure, is not a full, and 
must be an unhappy man. He is an 
Australian flower, either over or under 
developed, scentless, — selfish as a living 
fire without heat for the cold hands of 
children. 

THE UNITY OF MAN'S BLOOD. 

Blood of the people ! changeless tide, 

through century, creed and race ! 
Still one as the sweet salt sea is one, 

though tempered by sun and place ; 
The same in the ocean currents, and the 

same in the sheltered seas ; 
Forever the fountain of common hopes 

and kindly sympathies ; 

Indian and Negro, Saxon and Celt, 

Teuton and Latin and Gaul — 
Mere surface shadow and sunshine ; 

while the sounding unifies all ! 
One love, one hope, one duty theirs ! 

no matter the time or ken, 
There never was separate heart-beat in 

all the races of men ! 



iteatcfjtoortig* 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

A great, loving, generous heart will 
never find peace and comfort and field 
of labor except within her unstatistical, 
sunlike, benevolent motherhood. . . . 
I am a Catholic just as I am a dweller 
on the planet. . . . Man never made 
anything so like God's work as the mag- 
nificent, sacrificial, devotional faith of 
the hoary but young Catholic Church. 
There is no other church ; they are all 
just way stations. 



LIBERTY. 

I am Liberty, — God's daughter ! 

My symbols — a law and a torch ; 
Not a sword to threaten slaughter, 

Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch ; 
But a light that the world may see, 
And a truth that shall make men free. 

I am the sister of Duty, 

And I am the sister of Faith ; 

To-day, adored for my beauty, 
To-morrow, led forth to death. 

I am she whom ages prayed for ; 

Heroes suffered undismayed for ; 

Whom the martyrs were betrayed for ! 



THE DUTY OF MARTYRDOM. 

The highest duty that ever comes to a 
man is not to do a deed of prowess or 
win a material victory, but to endure, 
suffer and die for truth and freedom. 



J^atc^toorbg* 



THE PATRIOT. 

Sweeter far and deeper than the love 
Of flesh for flesh, is the strong bond of 

hearts 
For suffering motherland — to make her 

free ! 
Love's joy is short, and Hate's black 

triumph bitter, 
And loves and hates are selfish — save 

for thee — 

Jt. .A/. *Sfc .A/- .Ai. «i/f 

•7V "7v" TV" "TV" "TV TV 1 

For love of thee holds in it hate of 
wrong 

And shapes the hope that moulds hu- 
manity ! 

.At. JL. JA. .!£. J£ -M. 

•TV TV" -TT "TV* TV -7^ 

My Land ! I see thee in the marble, 

bowed 
Before thy tyrant, bound at foot and 

wrist — 
Thy garments rent — thy wounded 

shoulder bare — 
Thy chained hand raised to ward the 

cruel blow — 
My poor love round thee scarf -like, weak 

to hide, 
And powerless to shield thee — but a 

boy 
I wound it round thee, dearest, and a 

man 
I drew it close and kissed thee — 

mother, wife ! 
For thee the past and future days ; for 

thee 



6 t©atdjtoor&£. 

The will to trample wrong and strike 

for slaves ; 
For thee the hope that ere my arm be 

weak 
And ere my heart be dry may close the 

strife 
In which thy colors shall be borne 

through fire. 
And all thy griefs washed out in manly 

blood — 
And I shall see thee crowned and bound 

with love, 
Thy strong sons round thee guarding 

thee. 

* 

WINNING CAUSES. 

The causes or movements that have 
the elements of assured success . . . 
belong to the history of the human 
race and not to a mere handful of peo- 
ple from a remote corner of the earth, 
and must be tested by three supreme 
tests : the test of right principle, the 
test of endurance, and the test of 
growth. 



CHANGE. 

Every thinker is a changer — every 
discovery is a change. Only an ignorant 
or thoughtless person can believe that a 
man who changes is a bad man ; such a 
belief would sink the world in stagna- 
tion in a day. 



J©atcf)to0ri5£* 



THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 

Severe they were ; but let him cast the 

stone 
Who Christ's dear love dare measure 

with his own. 
Their strict professions were not cant 

nor pride. 
Who calls them narrow, let his soul be 

wide ! 
Austere, exclusive — ay, but with their 

faults, 
Their golden probity mankind exalts. 

■A&. Aim *&U -St* St* *AU 

*7T "7V" "7Y* TV "TV TV" 

They made no revolution based on 

blows, 
But taught one truth that all the planet 

knows, 
That all men think of, looking on a 

throne — 
The people may be trusted with their 

own! 



AMERICANISM FOR IRELAND. 

We can do Ireland more good by our 
Americanism than by our Irishism. 



PLYMOUTH ROCK. 

Here, on this rock, and on this sterile 

soil, 
Began the kingdom not of kings, but 

men : 
Began the making of the world again. 



8 f©atcJ)toorti^ 



Here centuries sank, and from the 
hither brink 

A new world reached and raised an old- 
world link, 

When English hands, by wider vision 
tanght, 

Threw down the feudal bars the Nor- 
mans brought, 

And here revived, in spite of sword and 
stake. 

Their ancient freedom of the "Wapen- 
take ! 



THE GROUNDWORK OF TRUE LIBERTY. 

In the name of liberty not only 
crimes have been committed, but princi- 
ples more vicious than any crime, being 
the crystallization of a thousand evils, 
have been enunciated. Both civiliza- 
tion and liberty have been misrepre- 
sented, even by well-meaning reformers. 
Neither civilization nor liberty can be 
suddenly donned like a new garment, 
or immediately constructed, like a neces- 
sary piece of manufacture. Unless they 
are based on the moral perceptions and 
convictions of the people, they are based 
on quicksands, and are only new and 
more hopeless kinds of savagery, for 
they are the savagery of shrewdness in- 
stead of boldness. 



t©atc?)iD0rD£* 9 



man's growth and freedom's growth. 

It is not enough, to win rights from a 

king and write them down in a book. 
New men, new lights ; and the fathers' 

code the sons may never brook. 
What is liberty now were license then : 

their freedom our yoke would be ; 
And each new decade must have new 

men to determine its liberty. 



THE BOSTON MASSACRE. 

God chose these men to die 
As teachers and types, that to humble 

lives may chief award be made ; 
That from lowly ones, and rejected 

stones, the temple's base is laid ! 

****** 

When the bullets leaped from the 

British guns, no chance decreed 

their aim : 
Men see what the royal hirelings saw — 

a multitude and a flame ; 
But beyond the flame, a mystery ; five 

dying men in the street, 
While the streams of severed races in 

the well of a nation meet ! 

?jr 5j? *ffc •£» '!> ^K" 

Call it riot or revolution, or mob or 

crowd, as you may, 
Such deaths have been seed of Nations, 

such lives shall be honored for aye. 
They were lawless hinds to the lackeys 
■ — but martyrs to Paul Revere ; 
And Otis and Hancock and Warren 

read spirit and meaning clear. 



10 t©atd>tootb$$. 



DEMOCRACY. 

The principles of Democracy as laid 
down by Jefferson are to us the change- 
less basis of sound politics and healthy 
republicanism. . . Democracy means 
to us the least government for the peo- 
ple, instead of more or most. It means 
that every atom of paternal power not 
needed for the safety of the Union and 
the intercourse of the population should 
be taken from the Federal Government 
and kept and guarded by the States and 
the people. It means the spreading and 
preserving of doubt, distrust, and dis- 
like of all sumptuary and impertinent 
laws. It means that law shall only be 
drawn at disorder, and that all affairs 
that can be managed without disorder 
shall be managed without law. It 
means that all laws not called for by 
public disorder are an offense, a nuis- 
ance, and a danger. ... It means 
home rule in every community right 
through our system, from the township 
up to the State Legislature ; and above 
that, utter loyalty to the Union. It 
means antagonism to all men, classes 
and parties that throw distrust and dis- 
credit on the working or common peo- 
ple, and who insinuate or declare that 
there is a higher, nobler, or safer patri- 
otism among the wealthy and more 
book-learned classes than the common 
people possess or appreciate. 



3©atcf}te0rij£. 11 



THE TOWN MEETING. 

Liberty can be ; 
The State is freedom if the Town is 
free. 



man's right and states' rights. 

When men talk so much about rights 
they must be willing to go to the foun- 
dation. The bottom right is the right 
of a man, not of a State. If the general 
government had no right to oppress 
States, States had no right to oppress 
men. 



god's alchemy of exile. 

Exile is God's alchemy! Nations He 
forms like metals, — 

Mixing their strength and their tender- 
ness; 

Tempering pride with shame and victory 
with affliction ; 

Meting their courage, their faith and 
their fortitude, — 

Timing their genesis to the world's 
needs ! 



12 t©atcl)toorbg. 



America's standing army. 

Go stand at Arlington the graves 

among: 
No ramparts, cannons there, no banners 

hung, 
No threat above the Capitol, no blare 
To warn the senators the guns are there. 

But never yet was city fortified 

Like that sad height above Potomac's 

tide; 
There never yet was eloquence in speech 
Like those ten thousand stones, a name 

on each ; 

No guards e'er pressed such claims on 

court or king 
As these Praetorians to our Senate 

bring ; 
The Army of Potomac never lay 
So full of strength as in its camp to-day ! 



THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH. 

Like rays from that great Eye the altars 
show, 

That fall triangular, free States should 
grow, 

The soul above, the brain and hand be- 
low. 



t©atcpoortig* 13 

A MAN ? S WORD. 

There is nothing of a man but the 
word, that is kept or broken — sacred as 
life, or unstable as water. By this we 
-judge each other, in philosophy and prac- 
tice ; and by this test shall be ruled the 
ultimate judgment. 



god's test. 
God! Thou hast made man a test of 

Thyself ! 
Thou hast set in him a heart that bleeds 

at the cry of the helpless. 

* 

falsehood's punishment. 

The punishment of falsehood is to 
suspect all truth. 



life. 
Who waits and sympathizes with the pet- 
tiest life, 
And loves all things, and reaches up to 

God 
With thanks and blessing — he alone is 
living. *^ 

♦$♦ 

WOMEN AND MEN. 

Women . . are higher, truer, 
nobler, smaller, meaner, more faithful, 
more frail, gentler, more envious, less 
philosophic, more merciful— oh, far more 
merciful and kind and lovable and good 
than men. 



14 fBatd)toorti£. 



EXPERIENCE. 

Who heeds not experience, trust him 
not ; tell him 
The scope of one mind can but trifles 
achieve : 
The weakest who draws from the mine 
will excel him — 
The wealth of mankind is the wisdom 
they leave. 



DUTY. 

Duty is love that is dead but is kept 
from the grave for a while. 



THE HIDDEN SIN". 

Who hides a sin is like the hunter who 
Once warmed a frozen adder with his 
breath, 
And when he placed it near his heart it 
flew 
With poisoned fangs and stung that 
heart to death. 

A sin admitted is nigh half-atoned, 
And while the fault is red and freshly 
done, 
If we but drop our eyes and think, — 'tis 
owned, — 
'Tis half forgiven, half the crown is 
won. 



3©atcl)to0rti£* 15 

But if we heedless let it reek and rot, 
Then pile a mountain on its grave, and 
turn 
With smiles to all the world, — that 
tainted spot 
Beneath the mound will never cease to 
burn. 



WOMEN AND FIRST LOVE. 

The first love of some women is 
mysteriously tenacious. It ceases to be 
a passion, and becomes a principle of 
life. It is never destroyed until life 
ceases. It may change into a torture — 
it may become excited like white-hot iron, 
burning the heart it binds; or it may 
take on a lesser fire, and change into red 
hatred ; but it never grows cold — ■ it 
never loses its power to command at a 
thrill the deepest motives of her nature. 

. . But the change from white heat 
to fierce red is not infinite. It is a tran- 
sition rapidly made. At the white heat, 
the woman's love burns herself ; at the 
red, it burns the man she loves. A 
woman's hatred is only her love on fire. 



love's secret. 

Love lies within the brimming bowl 

of sense : 
Who keeps this full has joy — who 

drains, affliction. 



16 J©atcPdortMSL 



DISTANCE. 

The world is large, when its weary 
leagues two loving hearts divide ; 

But the world is small, when your en- 
emy is loose on the other side. 

♦$♦ 

WHEN WOMEN MAKE GOOD MEN. 

Women have all the necessary qual- 
ities to make good men, but they must 
give their time and attention to it while 
the men are boys. 



TO-DAY. 

Only from day to day 

The life of a wise man runs ; 
What matter if seasons far away 

Have glooms or have double suns ? 
# * *" * * * * 

Like a tide our work should rise — 
Each later wave the best ; 

To-day is a king in disguise, 
To-day is the special test. 

Like a sawyer's work is life : 
The present makes the flaw, 

And the only field for strife 
Is the inch before the saw. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

The wise, the witty, the many-ideaed 
philosopher, poet, physician, novelist, 
essayist, and professor; but, best of all, 
the kind, the warm heart. 



tteatcljiDoriig* 17 



THE SORROW OF HAVING. 

Joys have three stages, Hoping, Having, 
and Had ; 

The hands of Hope are empty, and the 
heart of Having is sad ; 

For the joy we take, in the taking dies ; 
and the joy we Had is its ghost. 

Now, which is the better — the joy un- 
known, or the joy we have clasped 
and lost ? 



THE LURE. 

" What bait do you use," said a Saint to 
the Devil, 
" When you fish where the souls of 
men abound ? " 
" Well, for special tastes," said the King 
of Evil, 
" Gold and Fame are the best I've 
found." 
"But for common use?" asked the 

Saint. " Ah, then," 
Said the Demon, " I angle for Man, not 
men, 

And a thing I hate 
Is to change my bait, 
So I fish with a woman the whole 
year round." 



* 



DISRAELI. 

He employed the arts and tricks of 
the charlatan ; but it was the hand of a 
master that used them. 



18 iteatcfttoorb^ 



THE CULTUEE WORTH GETTING. 

True culture is the culture of 
strength, not of weakness. Who cares 
to bridle and teach the incomplete, the 
effete, the thin-blooded and boned? Do 
not be deceived. Put your ear down to 
the rich earth, and listen to the vast, 
gurgling blood of Humanity, and learn 
whither it strives to flow, and what and 
where are its barriers. This is the cul- 
ture worth getting, the culture that wins 
the love and shout of millions instead of 
the gush and drivel of tens. Love and 
hope and strength and good are all in the 
crowd, . . . and not in the diluted 
blood of aesthetic critics. 



') 



BOHEMIA AND SOCIETY. 

There are no titles inherited there, 

No hoard or hope for the brainless heir ; 

No gilded dullard native born 

To stare at his fellow with leaden scorn : 

Bohemia has none but adopted sons ; 

Its limits, where Fancy's bright stream 

runs; 
Its honors, not garnered for thrift or 

trade, 
But for beauty and truth men's souls 

have made. 
To the empty heart in a jeweled breast 
There is value, maybe, in a purchased 

crest; 



t©atcf*tootti^ 19 



But the thirsty of soul soon learn to 

know 
The moistureless froth of the social 

show; 
The vulgar sham of the pompous feast 
Where the heaviest purse is the highest 

priest : 
The organized charity, scrimped and 

iced, 
In the name of a cautious, statistical 

Christ; 
The smile restrained, the respectable 

cant, 
When a friend in need is a friend in 

want ; 
Where the only aim is to keep afloat, 
And a brother may drown with a cry in 

his throat. 
Oh, I long for the glow of a kindly 

heart and the grasp of a friendly 

hand, 
And I'd rather live in Bohemia than in 

any other land. 



THE WORST DEFEAT. 

Putting your enemy in the wrong in 
the sight of men is the worst kind of 
defeat, against which neither individual 
nor nation can long persist. 



IRELAND'S MOTHERHOOD. 

Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, 
but a barren nurse. 



20 tteatcpuortig. 



A MAN OF THE WORLD. 

So lie goes on, till the world grows old, 
Till his tongue has grown cautious, his 

heart has grown cold, 
Till the smile leaves his mouth, and the 

ring leaves his laugh, 
And he shirks the bright headache you 

ask him to quaff ; 
He grows formal with men, and with 

women polite, 
And distrustful of both when they're 

out of his sight ; 
Then he eats for his palate, and drinks 

for his head, 
And loves for his pleasure, — and 'tis 

time he was dead ! 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unrea- 
sonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is 
a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized 
proposition. It is a half -fledged, unmu- 
sical, Promethean abomination. It is a 
quack bolus to reduce masculinity even 
by the obliteration of femininity. . . 
It is the sediment, not the wave of a 
sex. It is the antithesis of that highest 
and sweetest mystery — conviction by 
submission, and conquest by sacrifice. 



REFORMERS. 

The men who have changed the world 
with the world have disagreed. 



3©atdjiD0rfc& 21 



THE DAILY NEWSPAPER. 

It is the biography of a Day. It is a 
photograph, of twenty-four hours' length, 
of the mysterious river of time that is 
sweeping past us forever. And yet we 
take our year's newspapers, which con- 
tain more tales of sorrow and suffering, 
and joy and success, and ambition and 
defeat, and villainy and virtue, than the 
greatest book ever written, and we give 
them to the girl to light the fire ! 



MONEY. 

Mere store of money is not wealth, but 
rather 
The proof of poverty and need of 
bread. 
Like men themselves is the bright gold 
they gather 
It may be living, or it may be dead. 

It may be filled with love and life and 
vigor, 
To guide the wearer, and to cheer the 
way; 
It may be corpse-like in its weight and 
rigor, 
Bending the bearer to his native clay. 

There is no comfort but in outward 
showing 
In all the servile homage paid to 
dross ; 
Better to heart and soul the silent 
knowing 
Our little store has not been gained 
by loss. 



22 t©atcpuot&5$. 



A JOURNALIST'S CODE OF HONOR. 

Never do anything as a journalist 
which you would not do as a gentleman. 



MENS FRIENDSHIP-BREAKERS. 

When men possess one secret or one 

creed, 
Or love one land, or struggle for one need, 
They draw together brotherly and 

human — 
They only fly apart who love one woman. 



THE POET'S SUCCESS. 

When he succeeds in reaching men's 
hearts, all other successes are as nought 
to the poet's. All other honors, emolu- 
ments, distinctions, are chips and tinsel 
compared with the separated and be- 
loved light which surrounds him in the 
eyes and hearts of the people. 



MARY. 

The sweet-faced moon reflects on cheer- 
less night 
The rays of hidden sun to shine to- 
morrow ; 
So unseen God still lets His promised 
light, 
Through Holy Mary, shine upon our 
sorrow. 



t©atcf)toot:&^ 23 



PRICELESS THINGS. 

Statesmen steer the nation safely ; art- 
ists pass the burning test ; 

And their country pays them proudly 
with a ribbon at the breast. 

When the soldier saves the battle, wraps 

the flag around his heart, 
Who shall desecrate his honor with the 

values of the mart ? 

From his guns of bronze we hew a piece, 

and carve it as a cross ; 
For the gain he gave was priceless, as 

unpriced would be the loss. 

When the poet sings the love-song, or 
the song of life and death, 

Till the workers cease their toiling with 
abated wondering breath ; 

When he gilds the mill and mine, in- 
spires the slave to rise and dare ; 

Lights with love the cheerless garret, 
bids the f yrant to beware ; 

When he steals the pang from poverty 
with meanings new and clear, 

Eeconciling pain and peace, and bringing 
blissful visions near ; — 

His reward ? JSTor cross nor ribbon, but 

all others high above ; 
They have won their glittering symbols 

— he has earned the people's love ! 



24 f©atcI)fcD0r&g* 



A LADY. 

A lady is simply the highest type of 
a woman. She will be gentle and 
modest, mistress of temper and curi- 
osity. . . . She will know and 
honor her own place in the social order, 
as the divinely-appointed moulder, 
teacher, and refiner of men ; and out of 
this beautiful and noble place she 
will not seek to move. To fit her- 
self for her place, she will culti- 
vate body and mind, the body in 
health and vigor that she may take her 
share of burdens and be cheerful under 
them, and that her work in the world 
shall be as fairly done as her hands car do 
it; and the mind in knowledge, accom- 
plishment and taste, that she may be a 
delight and a help in her home. . . . 
A lady is always natural ; and calm 
self-respect and respect for others are 
two of the unseen but real shields that 
protect ladies even in associations 
which must surely stain or injure 
natures of lower culture or less poise. 

. . . There is a lady hidden in 
every woman, as there is a gentleman in 
every man; and no matter how far the 
actual may be from the possible, one 
thing is certain, that a true lady or a 
true gentleman is always recognized and 
acknowledged by this secret nobility in 
the human heart. 



!©atcl)to0r&^ 25 



WORK AND TRUST. 

There seems no good in asking or in 
humbling ; 
The mind incurious has the most of 
rest ; 
If we can live and laugh and pray, not 
grumbling, 
'Tis all we can do here — and 'tis the 
best. 

The throbbing brain will burst its ten- 
der raiment 
With futile force, to see by finite light 
How man's brief earning and eternal 
payment 
Are weighed as equal in the Infinite 
sight. 

'Tis all in vain to struggle with abstrac- 
tion — 
The milky way that tempts our men- 
tal glass ; 
The study for mankind is earth-born 
action ; 
The highest wisdom, let the wonder- 
ing pass. 

The Lord knows best : He gave us 
thirst for learning; 
And deepest knowledge of His work 
betrays 
No thirst left waterless. Shall our soul- 
yearning, 
Apart from all things, be a quenchless 
blaze ? 



26 tBattljtoorti^ 



CHARACTER IN MUSCLE. 

There is character as well as strength 
in muscle ; and little of either in 
flabbiness or lard. . . . Fatness 
and softness are merely sensuous ex- 
pressions, or symptoms of disease. 
They are non-conductors of spiritual 
messages, stopping or deadening the 
finer currents of enjoyment, as an insu- 
lator stops electricity. 



BONE AND SINEW AND BRAIN. 

A nation's boast is a nation's bone, 
As well as its might of mind ; 

And the culture of either of these alone 
Is the doom of a nation signed. 

Ho, white-maned waves of the Western 
Sea, 
That ride and roll to the strand ! 
Ho, strong-winged birds, never blow a-lee 
By the gales that sweep toward land ! 
Ye are symbols both of a hope that saves, 
As ye swoop in your strength and 
grace, 
As ye roll to the land like the billowed 
graves 
Of a suicidal race. 
Ye have hoarded your strength in equal 
parts ; 
For the men of the future reign 
Must have faithful souls and kindly 
hearts, 
And bone and sinew and brain. 



t©atcJ>toori>s$. 27 



INHERITANCE. 

God pity them all ! God pity the worst ! 

for the worst are reckless, and need 

it most : 
When we trace the causes why lives are 

curst with the criminal taint, let no 

man boast : 
The race is not rim with an equal 

chance : the poor man's son carries 

double weight ; 
Who have not, are tempted ; inherit- 
ance is a blight or a blessing of 

man's estate. 



THE LOVING CUP OF THE PAPYRUS. 

For brotherhood, not wine, this cup 
should pass; 
Its depths should ne'er reflect the eye 
of malice ; 
Drink toasts to strangers with the social 
glass, 
But drink to brothers with this loving 
chalice. 

And now, Papyrus, each one pledge to 
each : 
And let this formal tie be warmly 
cherished. 
No words are needed for a kindly 
speech — 
The loving thought will live when 
words have perished. 



28 f©atct>toor&g* 



THE TEST OF TIME. 

Not on the word alone 
Let love depend : 

Neither by actions done 
Choose ye the friend. 

Let the slow years fly — 
These are the test; 

Never to peering eye 
Open the breast. 

Psyche won hopeless woe, 
Reaching to take ; 

Wait till your lilies grow 
Up from the lake. 



OUR DUTY TO THE FUTURE AMERICAN. 

To make the future American all he 
ought to be, physically, mentally and 
spiritually, we must build gymnasiums 
as well as schools and churches. We 
must honor the teaching of health and 
strength and beauty, as the Greeks did, 
as well as the teaching of books and 
sciences. We must cover our incompar- 
able rivers and lakes with canoes and 
light outrigged boats, as we are covering 
our bays with white-sailed yachts. We 
must see that every square fifty yards 
of clear ice in winter is covered with 
merry skaters. 



f©atcf)toorD^ 29 



FACTS AND TRUTHS. 

Facts are the opposite of truths. 
Facts are mere pebbles; unrelated ac- 
cretions of the insignificant. 



A MAN AND HIS FRIEND. 

Too late we learn — a man must hold his 

friend 
Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end. 



* 



PEACE IN POWER. 

There is peace in power ; the men 
who speak 
With the loudest tongues do least ; 
And the surest sign of a mind that is 
weak 
Is its want of the power to rest. 



THE KIND WORD UNSPOKEN. 

The kindly word unpsoken is a sin, — 
A sin that wraps itself in purest 
guise, 
And tells the heart that, doubting, 
looks within, 
That not in speech, but thought, the 
virtue lies. 



30 i©atct>toot&£. 



A BLUNDERER. 

The wise man is sincere ; bnt he who 

tries 
To be sincere, hap-hazard, is not wise. 



a builder's lesson. 
" How shall I a habit break ? " 
As yon did that habit make. 
As yon gathered, yon mnst lose ; 
As yon yielded, now refnes. 

Thread by thread the strands we 

twist, 
Till they bind ns neck and wrist ; 
Thread by thread the patient hand 
Mnst nntwine ere free we stand. 
As we bnilded, stone by stone, 
We must toil — nnhelped, alone, — 
Till the wall is overthrown. 

But remember, as we try, 
Lighter every test goes by ; 
Wading in, the stream grows deep 
Toward the centre's downward 

sweep ; 
Backward turn, each step ashore 
Shallower is than that before. 

Ah, the precious years we waste 
Levelling what we raised in haste ; 
Doing what must be undone 
Ere content or love be won ! 
First across the gulf we cast 
Kite-borne threads, till lines are 

passed, 
And habit builds the bridge at last ! 



t©atcl)toos:D^ 31 



MOTIVE-CENTRES. 

The motive-centre of a thinker is the 
brain ; of a philanthropist, the heart ; of 
a sensualist, the belly. In the last-named 
class, a kindly, or beautiful, or devotional 
aspiration enters the mind and wanders 
aimlessly through the flabby muscles, 
straying off the nerve at will ; for the 
tissues have not sufficient consistency to 
hold it on the line, until it sinks gradu- 
ally but surely toward the marshy and 
forbidden wastes of appetite, and is 
drowned, like a belated traveller, in the 
weedy morasses of the gastric centre. 



WORK-TEST AND LOVE-TEST. 

As creeping tendrils shudder from the 
stone, 
The vines of love avoid the frigid 
heart ; 
The work men do is not their test alone, 
The love they win is far the better 
chart. 



THE LOVE THAT LIVES. 

True love shall trust, and selfish love 

must die, 
For trust is peace, and self is full of pain ; 
Arise, and heal thy brother's grief ; his 

tears 
Shall wash thy love and it will live 

again. 



32 t©atct>toor&^ 



WHEN GOD SPEAKS. 

The Infinite always is silent, 

It is only the Finite speaks, 
Our words are the idle wave-caps 

On the deep that never breaks. 
We may question with wand of 
science, 

Explain, decide, and discuss ; 
But only in meditation 

The Mystery speaks to us. 



POETS AND PROPHETS. 

There are two kinds of poets — the 
seers of equity or truth, and the seers 
of harmony. There is really no differ- 
ence between them, except that the for- 
mer see farther and deeper — to them 
appear the harmonies and discords of 
systems, "the wrong of law," the injus- 
tices, sacrifices, salvations. These poets 
ought to be known by another name — 
they should be called prophets. 



DOUBT. 

Doubt is brother-devil to Despair. 



LOSS AND DEFEAT. 

Loss is an empty cup — an overturned 
vessel. Defeat in a good contest means 
a cup that lacks only one or more drops 
of being completely full. 



t©attljto0£&g* 33 

THE MEAN SOUL'S GAIN. 

The mean of soul are sure their faults 

to gloss, 
And find a secret gain in others' loss. 



AT BEST. 

From soul to soul the shortest line 

At best will bended be ; 
The ship that holds the straightest 
course 

Still sails the convex sea. 

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE RIGHT. 

Oppression, that kills the craven, 
Defied, is the freeman's good : 

No cause can be lost forever whose cost 
Is coined from Freedom's blood ! 

Liberty's wine and altar 

Are blood and human right; 

Her weak shall be strong while the 
struggle with wrong 
Is a sacrificial fight. 

Earth for the people — their laws their 
own — 
An equal race for all : 
Though shattered and few who to this 
are true 
Shall flourish the more they fall. 



34 t©atci[)to0r&£* 



A REASON FOR MERCY. 

Then, for duty, I trusted again ; 
For who should stand if God were to 
frown on the twice-told failures of 
men. 



REALISM. 

Komantic literature belongs to the 
domain of art, on the same level as 
sculpture, painting, and the drama. In 
none of these other expressions is the 
abnormal, the corrupt, the wantonly re- 
pulsive allowable. The line of treat- 
ment on these subjects is definitely 
drawn and generally acknowledged. 
The unnecessarily foul is unpardonable. 

"Why should not the same limit be ob- 
served in romantic literature ? 

All art deals with nature and truth, 
but not with all nature and all truth. 



THE MEASURE OF VITALITY. 

The vitality of men and nations may 
be measured by their devotion to ex- 
alted and unchangeable principles. Sec- 
ondary or inferior races pride them- 
selves on selfish and material qualities, 
on their organizing capacity for securing 
wealth, luxury, and domination. They 
are intellectual machines, potent as a 
wedge or an engine, or the explosion of 
a bomb, — and as limited, unsympa- 
thetic, and uninfluential. 



f©atcJjtoot&£, 35 



IRELAND. 

With what weapon must that coun- 
try be struck where the palace is a 
temple of infamy, and the prison a 
shrine of national honor ? 



A NATION'S TEST. 

A nation's greatness lies in men, not 
acres ; 
One master-mind is worth a million 
hands. 
No royal robes have marked the planet- 
shakers, 
But Samson-strength to burst the 
ages' bands. 
The might of empire gives no crown 
supernal — 
Athens is here — but where is ^lace- 
don ? 
A dozen lives make Greece and Eome 
eternal, 
And England's fame might safely rest 



on one. 



* 



freedom's martyr. 

The people that are blest 
Have him they love the best 
To mount the martyrs scaffold when 
they need him : 
And vain the cords that bind 
While the nation's steadfast mind, 
Like the needle to the pole, is true to 
freedom ! 



36 3Batcf)toot&£u 



THE SEED OF SACRIFICE. 

The greatest service a man can do for 
a good cause is to die for it. No man's 
life or work, however illustrious, is so 
potential as a martyr's death. The 
cause for which men are willing to die 
can never be destroyed. There is no 
seed so infallible and so fruitful as the 
seed of human sacrifice. 



ROBERT EMMET. 

He teaches the secret of manhood — 

the watchword of those who 

aspire — 
That men must follow freedom though 

it lead through blood and fire ; 
That sacrifice is the bitter draught 

which freemen still must quaff — 
That every patriotic life is the patriot's 

epitaph. 



TIME AND GREAT MEN. 

Great men grow greater by the lapse of 
time: 
We know those least whom we have 
seen the latest ; 
And they, 'mongst those whose names 
have grown sublime, 
Who worked for Human Liberty, are 
greatest. 



3©atdjtot8t^ 37 



THE HIGHER BEING. 

A man's higher being is knowing and 
seeing, not having and toiling for 
more ; 

In the senses and soul is the joy of con- 
trol, not in pride or luxurious store. 



ENGLAND AND IRELAND. 

The strength of England is, and al- 
ways has been, material force ; organi- 
zation ; concentration ; weight of 
stroke ; selfishness of purpose. Her 
power has marched through the cen- 
turies and the nations like a mail-clad 
battalion, plowing its way, repellent, un- 
sympathetic, defying criticism, bound 
on the seizure of its prey, disregarding 
the opinions of mankind. The power 
that Ireland has exerted through her ban- 
ished millions, is immaterial, diffused, 
intellectual, spiritual ; the very opposite 
to that of England. But it is the power 
of the steam, as compared to the power 
of the water. So far the nations repre- 
sent opposites : One concussion ; the 
other conversion. One a threat ; the 
other an argument. One repels ; the 
other attracts. One makes enemies ; 
the other makes friends. One wastes 
its own strength in every effort ; the 
other increases its power with every ex- 
ertion. Ireland appeals through her 
scattered children and their descendants 
to the consciences of men. 



38 t©atcl)toorti£. 



EDMUND BURKE. 

Races or sects were to him a profanity : 
Hindoo and Negro and Kelt were as 
one ; 
Large as mankind was his splendid hu- 
manity, 
Large in its record the work he has 
done. 



O'CONNELL. 

He roused the farms, — he made the serf 
a yeoman ; 
He drilled his millions and he faced 
the foe ; 
Bnt not with lead or steel he struck the 
foeman : 
Reason the sword — and human right 

the blow. 

* * # * # * 

He fought for faith — but with no nar- 
row spirit ; 
With ceaseless hand the bigot laws he 
smote ; 
One chart, he said, all mankind should 
inherit, — 
The right to worship and the right to 
vote. 

Always the same — but yet a glinting 
prism ; 
For wit, law, statecraft, still a master- 
hand ; 
An "uncrowned king" whose people's 
love was chrism ; 
His title — Liberator of his Land ! 



tteatcfjtoorb^ 39 



THOMAS MOORE. 

1 We take Tom Moore as God sent liim 
— not only the sweetest song-writer of 
Ireland, but . . . the first song- 
writer in the English language, not even 
excepting Burns. . . . He preserved 
the music of his nation and made it im- 
perishable. It can never be lost again 
till English ceases to be spoken. He 
struck it out like a golden coin, with 
Erin's stamp on it, and it has become 
current and unquestioned in all civilized 
nations. 



♦$♦ 



WORD AND DEED. 

The Word is great, and no Deed is 
greater, 
When both are of God, to follow or 
lead; 
But, alas, for the truth when the Word 
comes later, 
With questioned steps, to sustain the 
Deed. 



♦!♦ 



SOCIAL OSTRACISM AND SLAVERY. 

To insult and degrade a free man and 
tie his hands with social and statute 
wires, that cut and burn as well as re- 
strain, is worse than to seize him bodily 
and yoke him to a dray as a slave. 



40 ^©attfjtoort!^ 



THE IRISH-AMERICANS. 

No treason we bring from Erin — nor 

bring we shame nor guilt ! 
The sword we hold may be broken, but 

we have not dropped the hilt ! 
The wreath we bear to Columbia is 

twisted of thorns, not bays ; 
And the songs we sing are saddened by 

thoughts of desolate days. 
But the hearts we bring for Freedom 

are washed in the surge of tears ; 
And we claim our right by a People's 

right outliving a thousand years ! 



MAKE PEACE AT THE SOURCE OF ENMITY. 

There is another American reason 
why we should continue this Irish agi- 
tation. The elements of our population 
are mainly in the East descended from 
England and Ireland, and they inherit 
a prejudice, an unfriendliness — an un- 
natural, artifical, ignorant antipathy on 
both sides. That unnatural condition 
of distrust and dislike should cease in 
America, and we should amalgamate in- 
to one race, one great unified, self-lov- 
ing American people ; but that condi- 
tion will never come until peace is made 
between the sources of the two races. 
Their descendants in this country will 
always be facing each other in antagon- 
ism, discontent, and distrust, until En- 
gland sits down and shakes hands freely 
with Ireland. 



t©atct)toottig* 41 



TYRANTS. 

Tyrants are part of the people them- 
selves — the diseased part, and this dis- 
ease is not local, to be cured with a 
knife, but constitutional, and only to be 
reached by the medicine of equity, mo- 
rality, and self-respect. 

JOHN MITCHEL. 

0, for a tongue to utter 

The words that should be said — 
Of his worth that was silver, living, 

That is gold and jasper, dead ! 

Dead ! but the death was fitting : 
His life to the latest breath, 

Was poured like wax on the Chart of 
Eight, 
And is sealed by the stamp of Death ! 



BOSTON AND REVOLUTIONS. 

Boston knows the difference between 
mobs and revolutions. Her history 
tells her that a mob is a disease, while 
a revolution is a cure; that a mob has 
ouly passion and ignorance,, while a revo- 
lution has conviction and a soul; 
that a mob is barren, while a revolution 
is fruitful; that the leaders of a mob 
are miscreants to be condemned, while 
the leaders of a revolution are heroes to 
be honored forever. 



42 f©atcf)toorM* 



THE LESSON" OF CRISPUS ATTUCKS. 

Honor to Crispus Attucks, who was 

leader and voice that day, 
The first to defy and the first to die 

with Maverick, Carr, and Gray. 
Call it riot or revolution, his hand first 

clenched at the crown ; 
His feet were the first in perilous place 

to pull the king's flag down ; 
His heart was the first one rent apart 

that liberty's stream might flow ; 

For our freedom now and forever, his 

head was the first laid low. 
****** 

0, planter of seed in thought and deed 
has the year of right revolved, 

And brought the Negro patriot's cause 
with its problem to be solved ? 

His blood streamed first for the build- 
ing, and through all the century's 
years, 

Our growth of story and fame of glory 

are mixed with his blood and tears. 
****** 

And so, must we come to the learning 

of Boston's lesson to-day ; 
The moral that Crispus Attucks taught 

in the old heroic way : 
God made mankind to be one in blood, 

as one in spirit and thought; 
And so great a boon, by a brave man's 

death, is never dearly bought ! 



LEGAL SINS. 

There is never a legal sin but grows 
to the law's disaster. 



mattfyfonvlig. 43 



POLITICS. 



The highest interest of politics is the 
selfish interest of the people . . . 
Social equity is based on principles of 
justice ; political change on the opinion 
of a time. 



♦§♦ 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

A sower of infinite seed was he, a wood- 
man that hewed toward the light, 

Who dared to be traitor to Union when 
Union was traitor to Eight ! 



A LIVING FLAG. 

The veteran of the war is dearer and 
nearer even than the flag. He is a liv- 
ing flag, starred and scarred. 



THE LAND ACCURSED. 

Wherever a principle dies — 
Nay, principles never die ! 

But wherever a ruler lies, 
And a people share the lie , 

Where right is crushed by force, 
And manhood is stricken dead — 

There dwelleth the ancient curse, 
And the blood on the earth is red. 



44 J©atcJ>toor&& 



SOLDIER AND CITIZEN. 

God send us peace, and keep red strife 
away ; 
But should it come, God send us men 
and steel! 
The land is dead that dare not face the 
day 
When foreign danger threats the com- 
mon weal. 

Defenders strong are they that homes 

defend ; 
From ready arms the spoiler keeps 

afar. 
Well blest the country that has sons to 

lend 
From trades of peace to learn the trade 

of war. 

Thrice blest the nation that has every 
son 
A soldier, ready for the warning 
sound ; 
Who marches homeward when the fight 
is done, 
To swing the hammer and to till the 
ground. 

* 

god's building. 

Design is impotent if Nature frown. 

No deathless pile has grown from in- 
tellect. 

Immortal things have God for architect, 

And men are but the granite He lays 
down. 



fBatcfjtoorfc^ 45 



THE NEGRO AMERICAN. 

The negro is the only graceful, musi- 
cal, color-loving American. He is the 
only American who has written new 
songs and composed new music. He is 
the most spiritual of Americans, for he 
worships with soul and not with narrow 
mind. For him religion is to be be- 
lieved, accepted like the very voice of 
God, and not invented, contrived, rea- 
soned about, shaded, and made fashiona- 
bly lucrative and marketable, as it is 
made by too many white Americans. 

The negro is a new man, a free man, 
a spiritual man, a hearty man ; and he 
can be a great man if he will avoid 
modeling himself on the whites. 



THE TORY. 

Patrician, aristocrat, Tory — whatever 

his age or name, 
To the people's rights and liberties, a 

traitor ever the same. 
The natural crowd is a mob to him, 

their prayer a vulgar rhyme ; 
The free man's speech is sedition, and 

the patriot's deed a crime : 
Whatever the race, the law, the land, 

— whatever the time or throne, — 
The Tory is always a traitor to every 

class but his own. 



46 i^atcljtoort?^ 



SOCIAL DANGERS AND THE HIGHER LAW. 

The evil cannot be stamped out; it 
must be soothed out by Christian gentle- 
ness and generosity. The social dangers 
of our time can only be averted by a 
higher order of law. The relations of 
men and nations must be made equita- 
ble or they will be shattered by the 
wrath of the injured, who can so readily 
appeal to destructive agencies hitherto 
unknown. 



BEWARE OF THE WRONGED. 

Take heed of your civilization, ye, on 
your pyramids built of quivering 
hearts ; 

There are stages, like Paris in '93, 
where the commonest men play 
most terrible parts. 

Your statutes may crush but they can- 
not kill the patient sense of a natu- 
ral right : 

It may slowly move, but the People's 
will, like the ocean o'er Holland, is 
always in sight. 

lt It is not our fault ! " say the rich ones. 
No ; 'tis the fault of a system old 
and strong ; 

But men are the makers of systems ; so 
the cure will come if we own the 
wrong. 

It will come in peace if the man-right 
lead ; it will sweep in storm if it be 
denied : 



The law to bring justice is always de- 
creed; and on every hand are the 
warnings cried. 
Take heed of your Progress ! Its feet 

have trod on the souls it slew with 

its own pollutions ; 
Submission is good; but the order of 

God may flame the torch of the rev- 
olutions ! 
Beware with your Classes ! Men _ are 

men, and a cry in the night is a 

fearful teacher ; 
When it reaches the heart of the 

masses, then they need but a sword 

for a judge and preacher. 
Take heed, for your Juggernaut pushes 

hard ; God holds the doom that its 

day completes; 
It will dawn like a fire when the track 

is barred by a barricade in the city 

streets. 

THE FLOWER OF THE TREE OF FORCE. 

The hand is the symbol of the people ; 
the sword, of the lord : the barracks, of 
the king; and the ironclad, of the em- 
peror. If there were any higher means 
of centralizing force, there would be a 
rank still higher than imperalism. But 
when the tree of Force has reached its 
full growth, it must flower, and fall in 
seed. The flower of force is the jewelled 
crown of an emperor, and the seed of 
that gaudy flower, with its roots in the 
toiling hearts of the millions, is unrest, 
disorder, and rebellion. 



48 JBatcljtoorts^ 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. 

Emperors, stand to the bar ! Chancel- 
lors, halt at the barracks ! 

Landlords and Lawlords and Tradelords, 
the spectres yon conjured have 
risen — 

Communists, Socialists, Nihilists, Rent- 
rebels, Strikers, behold ! 

They are fruit of the seed you have 
sown — God has prospered your 
planting. They come 

From the earth, like the army of death. 
You have sowed the teeth of the 
dragon ! 

Hark to the bay of the leader ! You 
shall hear the roar of the pack 

As sure as the stream goes seaward. 
The crust on the crater beneath you 

Shall crack and crumble and sink, with 
your laws and rules 

That grind the rent from the tiller's 
blood for drones to spend — 

That hold the teeming planet as a gar- 
den plot for a thousand — 

4fr -U- 4fr -if* -if- J£« 

*7V* "TV" *7V' "/V *7V" "7V" 

As sure as the Spirit of God is Truth, 
this Truth shall reign, 

And the trees and lowly brutes shall 
cease to be higher than men. 

God purifies slowly by peace, but ur- 
gently by fire. 



* 



THE HEBREW RACE. 

The greatest race — taking its vicissi- 
tudes and its achievements, its numbers 
and its glories — that ever existed. 



tBatcpaorfc^ 49 



THE ARISTOCRAT. 



It is not the sea, but the separated 
pool that rots ; and so it is not the com- 
mon people, but the separated class of 
humanity that rots — the aristocrat, the 
idle man, the man on horseback, the fel- 
low who has ruled Europe for centuries. 



* 



BLUE BLOOD IN AMERICA. 

Thank God for a land where pride is 

clipped, where arrogance stalks 

apart ; 
Where law and song and loathing of 

wrong are the words of the common 

heart ; 
Where the masses honor straightforward 

strength, and know, when veins are 

bled, 
That the bluest blood is putrid blood — 

that the people's blood is red ! 



A SEED. 



A kindly act is a kernel sown, 
That will grow to a goodly tree, 

Shedding its fruit when time has flown 
Down the gulf of Eternity. 



50 J^atcfttoorti^ 



THE SOLDIERS' SONG. 

What song is best for the soldiers ? 

Take no heed of the words, nor choose 
you the style of the story ; 

Let it burst out from the heart like a 
spring from the womb of a moun- 
tain, 

Natural, clear, resistless, leaping its way 
to the levels ; 

Whether of love or hate or war or the 
pathos and pain of affliction ; 

Whether of manly pluck in the perilous 
hour, or that which is higher, 

And highest of all, the slowly bleeding 
sacrifice, 

The giving of life and its joys for the 
sake of men and freedom ; — 

Any song for the soldier that will har- 
monize with the life-throbs ; 

For he has laved in the mystical sea by 
which men are one ; 

His pulse has thrilled into blinding tune 
with the vaster anthems 

Which God plays on the battle-fields 
when He sweeps the strings of na- 
tions, 

And the song of the earth-planet bursts 
on the silent spheres, 

Shot through like the cloud of Etna 
with flames of heroic devotion, 

And shaded with quivering lines from 
the mourning of women and chil- 
dren ! 



J©atcl)tDorD^. 51 



THE LIFE OF THE TREE OF LIBERTY. 

The blood of tyrants is infertile, 
lethal, poisonous, to the tree of liberty 
or any other tree of life. The carcasses 
of all the tyrants on earth might be 
emptied on the roots of the tree of lib- 
erty and it would die of drought. 

The tree of liberty will never enfoli- 
ate and bear fruit unless it be watered 
from the well of justice, independence 
and fair play in the hearts of the peo- 
ple. Not by the blood of tyrants, but 
by the blood of good men, is the tree of 
liberty kept alive and flourishing. 



THE UNION OF FREEMEN. 

The races that band for plunder are the 
mud of the human stream, 

The base and the coward and sordid, 
without an unselfish gleam. 

It is mud that unites ; but the sand is 
free — ay, every grain is free, 

And the freedom of individual men is 
the highest of liberty. 

It is mud that coheres ; but the sand is 
free, till the lightning smite the 
shore, 

And smelt the grains to a crystal mass, 
to return to sand no more. 



52 t©atc&toort& 



THE DEMON OF MODERN PROGRESS. 

Out of Feudalism has come a new 
monster, even more terrible, more self- 
ish, more insatiable, and more powerful. 
Its eyes are science, its limbs and claws 
are brass and steel, and its life is steam 
and electricity. Its name is Progress. Its 
right arm is the organization of capital. 
It has seized on the common people as 
its prey, and they are powerless in its 
grip. It makes laws, and declares that 
they are just and eternal. It is trying 
to make a new morality, in which itself 
shall take the place of God. From this 
the people can only be saved by great 
hearts that feel for all the weak ones, 

and cultured brains that think for them. 

****** 

The millions are no longer still, like a 
swamp, disorganized and divided by its 
weeds and mud-banks . Time and knowl- 
edge have broken down many divisions; 
the waters are beginning to unite like a 
sea, forceful, fraternal; and like a sea 
they are moving to the influences that 
pass over them. 

May the future send wise voices rising 
to guide from unselfish hearts. The 
struggle will end, as all natural contests 
must end, in the triumph of mercy, 
morality and freedom, for these are the 
law of God. But its end may be in- 
definitely delayed for the want of wise 
and good men to lead the masses. 



fBatcpaortig* 53 

harvard's first colored class- 
orator. 

There are dignity and power in his 
hand if he be true to himself, which 
consists in being true to his people. 
Let no weak nerve draw him for an in- 
stant from their loving association. 
Their virtues are his own ; let him labor 
to reduce their faults. The Anglo-Saxon 
will accept him only when he has proved 
his strength in the mass. . . Negro 
strength is in negro unity ; and it must 
so continue till the crust of white pride, 
prejudice, and ignorance is broken, torn 
off, and trampled into dust forever. 
Then, and not till then, Clement Gar- 
nett Morgan can be a cosmopolitan. 
Until then he must be a faithful, for- 
bearing, helpful, and self-respecting 
negro. 



A WHITE ROSE. 

The red rose whispers of passion, 

And the white rose breathes of love ; 

Oh, the red rose is a falcon, 
And the white rose is a dove. 

But I send you a cream-white rose-bud 
With a flush on its petal tips ; 

For the love that is purest and sweetest 
Has a kiss of desire on the lips. 



54 f©atct)tooi:i!£* 



THE BANYAN TREE OF EVIL. 

The tree of evil is a banyan — its 
roots drop from above ; its blood is not 
drawn directly from the soil, but pours 
from the heart of the main stem, which 
you think healthy. Its diseased 
branches ramify through the admirable 
limbs, and cannot be separated with a 
knife. ... I have followed the 
main root of the criminal plant till I 
found it disappear beneath the throne ; 
and its lateral issues run through and 
under the titled and hereditary circles 
that ring the monarch. 



LIVE IN TO-DAY. 

0, the rare spring flowers ! take them as 

they come : 
Do not wait for summer buds — they 

may never bloom. 
Every sweet to-day sends, we are wise 

to save ; 
Eoses bloom for pulling; the path is to 

the grave. 



THE SCAR THAT IS A STAR. 

The highest honor that a man can 
bear in life or death is the scar of a 
chain borne in a good cause. 



f©atct)toor&£u 55 



IRELAND FOR ALL MENS FREEDOM. 

" Bride of the Sea ! may the world 
know your laughter 
As well as it knows your tears ! 

As your past was for Freedom, so be 
your hereafter : 
And through all your coming years 

May no weak race be wronged, and no 
strong robber feared ; 

To oppressors grow hateful, to slaves 
more endeared ; 

Till the world comes to know that the 
test of a cause 

Is the hatred of tyrants, and Erin's ap- 
plause ! " 



LIFE AND LOVE. 

The meteor-stone is dense and dark in 

space, 
But bursts in flame when through the 

air it rushes ; 
And our dull life is like an aerolite 
That leaps to fire within the sphere of 

love. 



* 



SHAM BRAVERY. 

Applause the bold man wins, respect the 

grave ; 
Some, only being not modest, think 

they're brave. 



56 2©ateJ)toorb£. 



THE NEGRO AND POLITICAL PARTIES. 

If I were a colored man I should use 
parties as I would a club — to break 
down prejudices against my people. I 
shouldn't talk about being true to any 
party, except so far as that party was 
true to me. Parties care nothing for 
you only to use you. You should use 
parties ; the highest party you have in 
this country is your own manhood. 
That is the thing in danger from all 
parties ; that is the thing that every 
colored American is bound in his duty 
to himself and his children to defend 
and protect. 



AUSTRALIA. 

Nation of sun and sin, 
Thy flowers and crimes are red, 
And thy heart is sore within 
While the glory crowns thy head. 
Land of the songless birds, 
What was thine ancient crime, 
Burning through lapse of time 
Like a prophet's cursing words ? 

Aloes and myrrh and tears 
Mix in thy bitter wine : 
Drink, while the cup is thine, 
Drink, for the draught is sign 
Of thy reign in the coming years. 



J©atcf>toorfc& 57 



BOSTON. 

Boston is a great city, because any 
day yon can meet great men on its 
streets. They belong to the town; 
everybody knows them, young and old. 
When they pass, the people look at 
them with pleasure, as at something 
noble and famous which is nearer to 
them than to outsiders. By their con- 
stant presence it has come to pass that 
Boston is accustomed to great reputa- 
tions. Who that could meet on their 
own familiar streets world-famous men 
like Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, 
Holmes, Lowell, Whipple, could resist 
the desire to know why they were 
famous ? And this is why Boston men, 
women and children have read higher 
books and can judge them better than 
the people of any other American city 
— if not of any city in the world, since 
that glorious time in Florence when 
could be seen such men as Donatello, 
Verrochio, Lorenzo de Medici, Leonardo 
da Vinci, Machiavelli, Savonarola, 
Michael Angelo and Raphael. Marvel- 
lous time ! A living university in the 
streets ! A people attuned to the most 
exalted notes by a comprehension of 
their own illustrious men ! 



fj? 



58 |©atct)toor&£* 



LOVE ANCHORED. 

Those we love truly never die, 
Though year by year the sad memorial 

wreath, 
A ring and flowers, types of life and 
death, 
Are laid upon their graves. 

For death the pure life saves, 
And life all pure is love : and love can 

reach 
From heaven to earth, and nobler lessons 
teach 
Than those by mortals read. 

Well blest is he who has a dear one 
dead; 
A friend he has whose face will never 

change — 
A dear communion that will not grow 
strange ; 
The anchor of a love is death. 



BEYOND THE GRASP OF DEATH. 

There is no contest ultimate — not 
even that awful one when we are called 
on to strip and wrestle with Death. 
Even then, though the trial be . fore- 
doomed, the prize is not ultimate. Death 
cannot carry away everything from the 
man he has thrown. The prize, indeed, 
is precious, for he hangs the life of a 
man on his awful breast. But behind 



J©atcf>tootti£* 59 

the passage of the victor lives on the 
faithful labor of the dead man, and 
the truth, the kindness, the public 
spirit, the noble example, and the good 
name. These remain as a blessing and 
a pride, even when the dear hand of the 
priest closes the eyes, and his prayer 
ascends over the senseless clay. 



AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

He ruled no serfs, and he knew no 
pride ; 

He was one with the workers side by 
side ; 

He hated a mill, and a mine, and a 
town, 

With their fever of misery, struggle, re- 
nown ; 

He could never believe but a man was 
made 

For a nobler end than the glory of 
trade. 

For the youth he mourned with an end- 
less pity 

Who were cast like snow on the streets 
of the city. 

He was weak, maybe ; but he lost no 
friend ; 

Who loved him once, loved on to the 
end. 

He mourned all selfish and shrewd en- 
deavor ; 

But he never injured a weak one — 
never. 



60 t©atci)toorti^ 



When censure was passed, he was 

kindly dumb ; 
He was never so wise but a fault would 

come ; 
He was never so old that he failed to 

enjoy 
The games and the dreams he had loved 

when a boy. 
He erred, and was sorry ; but never 

drew 
A trusting heart from the pure and 

true. 
When friends look back from the years 

to be, 
God grant they may say such things of 

me. 




J, G. Cvpples, Boston, TJ. S. A. 






I • • » • 



A Selection . 

. . . from the Publications of 




RECENT TRAVEL, ETC. 



Vigilante Days and Ways : The Pioneers ot 

the Rockies. By the Hon. N. P. Langford. With por- 
traits and illustrations. 2 vols., 8vo, cloth, 911 pages, $6.00; 
half morocco, $10.00; full morocco, $12.50. 

Remarkable for facts and for being one of the most stir- 
ringly written accounts of an otherwise unknown period of 
American history ever made by a Western author. It throws 
new light upon the section of the country of which it treats, 
and upon a class of men of heroic mould but humble origin, 
whose names now stand high in the New Great West. 

Glimpses of Norseland. By Hetta M. Her- 

vey. Illustrated. 1 vol., i6mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25. 
The experiences of a bright American girl among the 
Scandinavians : crisp and suggestive ; showing what to do, 
what to see, and what not to do. 

Bermuda Guide : A description of everything 

on and about the Bermuda Islands, concerning which the 
visitor or resident may desire information, including their 
history, inhabitants, climate, agriculture, geology, govern- 
ment, military and naval establishments. By James H. 
Stark, with Maps, Engravings and 16 Photoprints. 1 vol., 
i2mo, cloth, 157 pages, $2.00. 

Bahama Islands: History and guide to the Ba- 
hama Islands. By J. H. Stark. With many illustrations. A 
companion to Bermuda Guide, i2mo, $2.00. 

Boating Trips on New England Rivers. By 

Henry Parker Fellows. Illustrated. Square i2mo, cloth, 

$1.25. 

This capital book, the only American work so far upon its 
subject, was warmly commended by the late John Boyle 
O'Reilly, who saw in it the beginning of an interest in our 
American rivers, which he, one of the most enthusiastic of 
boatmen, did so much to encourage and foster. 

Mailed, to any address, postage paid, on receipt of price by 
the publisher. 

/. G. CUPPLES, 250 Boylston St., 
BOSTON. 



NEW FICTION. 



The Chevalier of Pensieri-Yani ; Together 

with Frequent References to the Prorege of Arcopia. By 
Henry B. Fuller. Half binding, $1.25; paper, 50 cents. 

The exquisite pleasure this book has given me. — Charles 
Eliot Norton. 

A precious book. . . It tastes of genius. — James Rus- 
sell Lowell. 

A new departure, really new. — Literary World. 

Penelope's Web : A Novel of Italy. By Owen 

Innsly, author of " Love Poems and Sonnets." A bit 
of exquisite prose (the first) from Miss Jennison, whoss 
" Love Poems and Sonnets " went through so many editions. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

Stray Leaves from Newport : A Book of Fan- 
cies. By Mrs. William Lamont Wheeler. Illustrated. 
Finely printed, and most beautifully bound in tapestry, 
white and gold. i6mo, cloth, $1.50; paper, 50 cents. 
Fourth Edition. 

By far the most popular book published upon America's 

aristocratic resort ; written, too, by one of its leaders. 

Something 1 Abont Joe Cuinmings ; or, A Son of 

a Squaw in Search of a Mother. i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 
A rough and ready story of the New South-west ; not 
vulgar, but strong, with a good deal of local color in it. 

Eastward : or, a Buddhist Lover. By L. K. H. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

Sure to please those who concur with Sydney Smith as 
to the meaning of doxy. 

Hiero-Salem : The Vision of Peace. By E. L. 

Mason. Illustrated. A curious and remarkable noveli 
interesting to those investigating Buddhism, Theosophy a7id 
the position of woman. Square i2mo, 508 pages, cloth, $2.00. 

Fellow Travellers: A Story. By Edward 

Fuller. i2mo, 341 pages, cloth, $1.00. 
A brilliantly written novel, depicting New England life, 
customs and manners, at the present time. 

Mailed, to any address, postage paid, on receipt of price by 
the publisher. 

J. G. CUPPLES, 250 Boylston St., 
BOSTON. 



NEW POETRY. 

A Poet's Last Songs. Poems by the late Henry 

Bernard Carpenter, with introduction by James Jeffrey 
Roche, and portrait. i6mo, unique binding, #1.50 net. 

This little volume is all that remains to us of the many- 
gifted man who came to Boston a few years ago, a stranger and 
unheralded, and took his place among her best poets and 
orators by the right divine of genius. 

Letter and Spirit. By A. M. Richards. 

By the wife of the celebrated American artist, William T. 
Richards. Psychological and devotional in character, 
and taking a high rank in American poetry. Square i2mo, 
unique binding, $1.50. 

No common, thoughtless verse-maker could produce, in 
this most difficult form of the sonnet, such thoughtful and 
exalted religious sentiments. — Phila. Press. 

Letter and Spirit is a book to be studied and treasured. — 
Boston Advertiser. 

An admirable command over the difficulties of the sonnet is 
shown. — Gazette, Boston. 

Margaret and the Singer's Story. By Effie 

Douglass Putnam. Second Edition. i6mo, white cloth, 
$1.25. 

Graceful verses in the style of Miss Proctor, by one of 
the same faith : namely, a Roman Catholic. 

In Divers Tones. By Herbert Wolcott 

Bowen. i6mo, half yellow satin, white sides, $1.25. 
" Triflfes light as a feather, caught in cunning forms." 

Auld Scots Ballads, edited by Robert Ford. 

Uniform with Auld Scots Humor. 1 vol., 300 pages, i6mo, 
cloth. Net, $1.75. Nearly ready. 

Mailed, to any address, postage paid, o?i receipt 0/ price by 
the publisher. 

J. G. CUPPLES, 250 Boylston St., 
BOSTON. 



RECENT AMERICANA. 



Paul Revere : A Biography. By Elbridge 
Henry Goss. 
Embellished with illustrations, comprising portraits, his- 
torical scenes, old and quaint localities, views of colonial 
streets and buildings, reproductions of curious and obsolete 
cuts, including many of Paul Revere's own caricatures and 
engravings, etc., etc., executed as photo-gravures, etchings, 
and woodcuts, many of them printed in colors. 
2 vols., 8vo, cloth, $6.00; large paper, $10.00. 

Porter's Boston. Forty full-page, and over fifty 
smaller illustrations, by George R. Tolman. 2d edition. 
1 vol., large quarto, half sealskin, #6.00. 
A few copies of the exceedingly scarce first edition can be 

had by direct application to the publisher, specially bound in 

half calf extra, for $9.00 net. 

The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729. 

Edited by Dr. G. E. Ellis, W. H. Whitmore, H. W. 
Torrey and James Russell Lowell. With index of names, 
places and events. 3 vols., large 8vo. Net, $ 10.00. 

This is a complete copy (printed at the University Press) 
of the famous diary of Chief Justice Sewall, the manuscript of 
which is one of the treasures of the Massachusetts Histcrical 
Society. It abounds in wit, humor and wisdom, and is rich in 
reference to names of early American families. 

Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles. By Parker 

Pillsbury. i2mo, 503 pages, cloth. Net. $2.00. 
An authoritative and comprehensive work by one of the 
original leaders in the anti-slavery movement ; not stereotyped 
and, as few copies remain for sale, it is certain to become an 
exceedingly scarce book. 

Life of Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Baronet s His 

English and American Ancestors. By Thomas C. Amory. 

With portrait. Large 8vo. Net, $1.50. 
An elaborate biography of one of Nantucket's most famous 
sons, who rose to high rank in the British navv, and afterwarrs 
founded the celebrated Coffin schools in his native island. 
Interesting not only to members of the Coffin family, but to 
genealogists. 

Mailed, to any address, postage paid, on receipt of p?- ice by 
the publisher. 

J. G. CUPPLES, 250 Boylston St., 
BOSTON 



FOR THE SEEKER AND FOR 
THE SORROWFUL. 

The Sunny Side of Bereavement ; as Illustrated 

in Tennyson's " In Memoriam." By Rev. Charles E. 
Cooledge. i2ino, parchment paper, 50 cents. 
For a sorrowing friend, nothing' could be more appro- 
priate, or more comforting and helpful. — Zion's Herald. 

Whence % What? Where? By J. R, Nichols, 

12th ed. With portrait. i6mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25. 
Fourteenth thousand. 

The World Moves. By A Layman. i6mo, 

cloth, $1.00. 

A little book, but one that has made a mighty commotion 
amongst the leaders of the different denominations. 

It has brought forth thousands of letters to the unknown 
author, from those who call themselves stanch and orthodox 
members of the fold, commending him for his plain talking 
and new views. 

NE W VOL UMES OF HUMOR. 

Aunt Nabbys Her Rambles, Her Adventures 

and Her Notions. By L. B. Evans. Second Edition. 

With illustrations. i6mo, cloth, $1.00. 

A capital addition to Yankee, i. e., New England humor, 
which is steadily growing in popular favor and which promises 
to outstrip "Widow Bedott." 

Auld Scots Humor : By Robert Ford. Illus- 
trated. Uniform with " Auld Scots Ballads." 1 vol., 344 
pages, i6mo, cloth. Net, $1.75. Nearly ready. 

Mailed, to any address, postage paid, on receipt of price by 
the pttblisher. 

J. G. CUPPLES, 250 Boylston St., 
BOSTON. 



TWO DELIGHTFUL BOOKS. 

Phillips Brooks : Bishop of Massachusetts. 

An Estimate. By Newell Dunbar. Illustrated with 
views of Trinity Church, Boston. i vol. Elzevir, i6mo, 
113 pp. White and gold, $1.25 ; cloth, $1.00. 
A refined and scholarly study of a great man. — Boston 
Transcript. 

Seems to have been written because the author could not 
help it. — New York Journal of Commerce. 

Watchwords from John Boyle O'Reilly : 

Edited and with Estimate by Katherine E. Conway. 

Beautifully illustrated. 1 vol. Elzevir, i6mo, 100 pp. 

White and gold, $1.25 ; cloth, $1.00. 
It was not an Irishman, but a son of the Puritans, 
who wr<jte of John Boyle O'Reilly: "I wish we could 
make all the people in the world standstill and think and 
feel about this rare, great, exquisite-souled man until they 
should fully comprehend him. Boyle was the greatest 
man, the finest heart and soul I knew." 

MEDICAL BOOKS FOR LAY 
READERS. 



Therapeutic Sarcognomy : A New Science of 

Soul, Brain and Body. By Joseph Rodes Buchanan, 
M. D. Illustrated. With glossary. 1 vol., large 8vo, 
700 pages, cloth. Net, $$.00. 
A work which promises to create a total revolution in phy- 
siology and medical philosophy. 

Sea-Sickness. How to Avoid It By Herman 

Partsch, M. D. i6mo, cloth, $1. 00. 

A valuable little volume that should be in the hands of 
every person who makes a sea voyage. — Boston Transcript. 

We cannot recall a work that deals more thoroughly or 
more _ understandingly with the matter. — Boston Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 

The Care of the Eyes in Health and Disease. 

By D. N. Skinner, M. E>., Maine Medical Society. Illustra- 
ted. Withindex. i2mo, 116 pages, cloth, $1. 00 
A valuable treatise, written for the general public by one 
of the best known experts on the subject. 

Mailed, to any address, postage paid, on receipt of price by 
the publisher. 

J. G. CUPPLES, 250 Boylston St., 
BOSTON. 



